{"id":24911,"date":"2013-04-15T15:51:53","date_gmt":"2013-04-15T20:51:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/?p=24911"},"modified":"2017-04-26T11:23:24","modified_gmt":"2017-04-26T16:23:24","slug":"see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-report-no-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/voxnova\/2013\/04\/15\/see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-report-no-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Report No Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

There is a lot of hand-wringing going on about the refusal of the media to report on the abortion shop-of-horrors case involving Kermitt Gosnell<\/a>. This is a truly horrific case, stomach turning in its intensity. Just consider some of the language in the grand jury report:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you perform late-term \u201cabortions\u201d by inducing labor, you get babies. Live, breathing, squirming babies. By 24 weeks, most babies born prematurely will survive if they receive appropriate medical care. But that was not what the Women\u2019s Medical Society was about. Gosnell had a simple solution for the unwanted babies he delivered: he killed them. He didn\u2019t call it that. He called it \u201censuring fetal demise.\u201d The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors into the back of the baby\u2019s neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that \u201csnipping.\u201d\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given this horror show, why the relative inattention? Some of the early excuses from the media bordered on the ridiculous \u2013 it was merely a local crime story, some said, as it that ever deters the media from covering something! But we should also be cautious about making overly-broad\u00a0accusations of a coordinated blackout by a pro-choice \u201cliberal media\u201d, as Grant Gallicho <\/a>argues. For one thing, the pro-choice brigade\u00a0claim to\u00a0be utterly opposed to these kind of unregulated \u201cbackroom abortions\u201d. For what Gosnell was doing was not safe, it was not legal, and it was not rare.<\/p>\n

But it would also be\u00a0naive to say\u00a0claim that the media silence was not at all connected to prevailing journalistic views about abortion.\u00a0The truth is, I believe,\u00a0a bit more\u00a0sophisticated. It comes from a media deeply reluctant to ask hard questions, expose themselves or their audiences to evident discomfort, or question comfortable groupthink. In recent years, it also comes from a tendency to meld news with entertainment, often in a form of vulgar voyeurism, and there is nothing entertaining about snipping the spinal cords of newborn babies.<\/p>\n

Think of some of the areas of comparable media blindness. Think of the New York Times refusing to call certain activities \u201ctorture\u201d when undertaken by the United States, but having no qualms about using this word in other contexts. Think of lopsided coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian context, inviting audiences to see the world through Israeli eyes, while keeping the Palestinian invisible. Think of the outsized attention given to cutting entitlement spending on the grounds of \u201cresponsibility\u201d,\u00a0with the corresponding relative lack of interest in addressing basic questions of economic injustice in an affluent society.<\/p>\n

For at the end of the day, journalists don\u2019t like stepping beyond their comfort zones, whether that comfort zone is the bias of country, the bias of class, or the bias of ideology. Given the demographic of most journalists, is it any surprise that we see so many more stories about same-sex marriage than about poverty or unemployment or the fortunes of the labor movement? People write about what they know about and what they feel comfortable with. Analyzing the Gosnell case \u2013 despite the best spin of the pro-choice movement \u2013 would entail asking hard questions about what actually happens in abortion, about the boundary between Gosnell\u2019s actions and what is permitted by a law that most of them support. An analogy would be to look beyond the \u201cvideo game\u201d quality of drone attacks and consider the blood and carnage on the ground. In each case, the easy option is to avoid disturbing the tranquillity of your world.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a lot of hand-wringing going on about the refusal of the media to report on the abortion shop-of-horrors case involving Kermitt Gosnell. This is a truly horrific case, stomach turning in its intensity. Just consider some of the language in the grand jury report: \u201cWhen you perform late-term \u201cabortions\u201d by inducing labor, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2951,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","category-mornings-minion"],"yoast_head":"\nSee No Evil, Hear No Evil, Report No Evil<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There is a lot of hand-wringing going on about the refusal of the media to report on the abortion shop-of-horrors case involving Kermitt Gosnell. 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